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Animal Surprises

Author: Nicola Davies Illustrator: Abbie Cameron

Publisher: GRAFFEG

Review

Creatures of all shapes and sizes, some you'll know and some surprises! Scaly, curly, whirly pangolins and round and cute and very furry mice rubs shoulders with elephants and crocodiles and tigers in this lovely picture book.

A simple illustrated nature picture book featuring a catchy rhyming refrain, Animal Surprises introduces a variety of animals to young readers in a friendly manner with a good level of text to illustration for three to six-year-olds. Children will also enjoy the mini-beast checklist and a join-the-dots puzzle at the end of the book.

Nicola Davies is the author of more than 50 books for children: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in more than 10 different languages and has won major awards in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany.

Nicola trained as a zoologist, taking a degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge. She spent some years as a field biologist and studied humpback and sperm whales, and bats, before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher and then presenter.

Following the start of her writing career, Nicola became a senior lecturer in creative writing, at Bath Spa University but has been writing full time for over a decade. She now regularly runs workshops for children and adults to help them find their voices as writers and advocates for nature. In 2017, she was the first recipient of the SLA’s award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Non-fiction and in 2018 had four picture books longlisted for the Greenaway Award.